About ‘Daisy Chain Motel’
Spoiler Alert – read “Daisy Chain Motel” first
My favorite Craigslist personal ad of all time came from a guy who had a flat tire on the the highway. He didn’t need any help changing the tire, but he was having a terrible day. His car was pulled over on the shoulder of the highway. His ad asked if any other guy would be willing to drive to his broken down car, get in the broken down car, give him a quick BJ (as the cars whizzed past at 60 MPH), and then drive away into the sunset. This is an actual ad written by an actual person in my hometown. Magical!
The most wonderful Craigslist ads are m4m (men for men) and I really wanted to write an m4m horror story. I’m proud of ‘Daisy Chain Motel’ – but it evolved during writing/rewriting until it became clear that it was not going to be that story.
‘Daisy Chain Motel’ is (at first) about a male/female couple in search of the elusive female “unicorn” willing to have a threesome. In the story, multiple women respond to the ad. Is that realistic? In order to research the story, I wanted to post an actual mw4w ad that would successfully generate responses.
I planned to post an initial ad on Craigslist and keep tweaking it while reposting in different cities until I invented one that attracted a critical mass of responders. Then I would have a legit ad that could be used for the story.
Then I would go a step further: I would scrub the personal information from the response emails and actually post them as a companion piece to the story! (Just like I am posting this as a behind-the-scenes companion piece.) You would get to see real people’s responses to an ad after reading a horrifying story about THAT VERY ad.
It would be chilling.
I told my wife the brilliant idea in an explosion of wild excitement. She calmly explained why it was crazy. If you post a bunch of creepy ads on CL, and then anonymously post a story about murdering people who respond to the very same ad you just posted, you may get some attention from the authorities. Plus, I would terrify the women who actually responded to the ad. Doing this would be rude and insensitive.
My wife and I got into an argument. In retrospect, I see that she is right and I need to apologize. Then, at work today, my boss found the final draft of ‘Daisy Chain Motel’ on the printer. I think he knows I’m the one who wrote it. Cringe. I’m not looking forward to that conversation with HR. The timing couldn’t be worse, either. A big client just left our firm and I expect layoffs to happen soon.
On top of all that, I had a tire blowout on the highway and I’m pulled over on the shoulder. I’m writing this in my car from a laptop with a cellular modem. It’s not hard to change a tire, but I’m so damn tense! I need to relax a little before jacking up the car and changing the tire. Thankfully, a good Samaritan just pulled over to help.
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